“Angela Franks’s superb new study of modern selfhood, Body and Identity: A History of the Empty Self.”
postmodernism
Carl Trueman, First Things: Best Book of 2025
“My scholarly book of the year is Angela Franks’s Body and Identity: A History of the Empty Self. … I was dazzled both by its learning and its commitment to articulating a Christian understanding of selfhood. … Franks does a remarkable job of showing how so many of these thinkers allow us to see more clearly into the problematic nature of our age. This is a book that deserves wide readership.”
Mary Harrington: Substack
“Her aim is gratifyingly ambitious: essentially Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self but more Catholic in its priors, less turgid in its prose, with post-structuralism and the missing bit between Augustine and Descartes added back in. …
She is remarkably erudite, a lucid writer, and comfortable toggling back and forth between metaphysical and postmodern vantage-points, meaning she can draw intellectual flexibility from the latter, without ever sacrificing the former’s commitment to truth. Absolute catnip … just so, so good.”